Review of the reign: The GroKo is at the end – a balance

It took the grand coalition a long time to get started. In between, their premature end was prophesied again and again. Now it really is at its end – quite regularly. How is the balance?

SPD veteran Franz Müntefering already knew that opposition is crap. But that a grand coalition can also be crap – for democracy, but also for the SPD – was clear to many comrades after the 2017 federal election. They struggled, they quarreled, they quarreled – and then they agreed to the forced political marriage and entered into what was already the third alliance with Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Union. The FDP was not entirely innocent of this situation, but that is another issue.

Contrary to many expectations, this painstakingly formed grand coalition held out until the end. And it left far more than just “crap”.

High starting pace

Immediately after the coalition agreement was signed in the spring of 2018, the unpopular alliance of convenience, even according to critics, set a fast pace. The GroKo seemed to want to prove to the republic that a love marriage is not absolutely necessary for the forging of laws.

So it became Coal exit provided with a concrete schedule (the so-called decommissioning path) as well as compensation commitments for the affected regions. The Skilled Workers Immigration Act it was decided. It is supposed to fill the gaping gaps in the care or catering sector, but so far it has hardly had any effect. The Basic pension is intended to take away the humiliating feeling of being fobbed off with a mini pension for all those who have long paid into the social security system

It was foreseeable that all of this would not take place without a bitter argument. When the microphone was switched off, the Union’s economic wing complained that the SPD Labor Minister Hubertus Heil was letting too much go through. And after the new SPD leadership duo Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans took over in November 2019, the premature end seemed certain. After all, Esken considered grand coalitions to be “crap” in principle. Many prophesied the imminent break of the arranged marriage in black and red.

But that didn’t come. Instead, Corona came.

Permanent state of emergency

With the pandemic, a period of permanent emergency began for those in power. If the republic seemed to have chosen the smartest of all paths through the crisis in a European and global comparison by summer 2020, a vaccine procurement disaster followed and a half-hearted reaction to rising numbers of infections in autumn. With the well-known consequences. And equally well-known accusations: the federal government cursed the federal states, which in turn criticized the federal government and Europe, the SPD against the CDU and vice versa.

In addition, the pandemic turned a lot on its head in terms of legislation that previously seemed to be on solid ground. The Black zero and the Debt brake suddenly sounded like terms from a bygone era: A 130 billion euro rescue package laced the groko. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, otherwise known for his wooden speeches, took the “bazooka” out of his vocabulary – and all of it with a “boom”. Shortly before the end of her term in office, Chancellor Merkel broke a self-imposed, European taboo EU rescue fund for the first time on communitized debts.

With the Nursing reform and new rules for the Meat industry The GroKo introduced laws that would hardly have had a chance without Corona.

And the pandemic made two other things clear to people: How “securing a livelihood” is the very German concept of the Short-time work and how terrifyingly backward the republic is to the rest of the world digitalization lags behind, especially in schools.

It is undisputed that Corona ruled out a break of this marriage of convenience beyond all GroKo friction. Corona works like a putty. For some wobbly candidates in Angela Merkel’s cabinet, the pandemic even meant a kind of job guarantee, for example for Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer.

Laws at the last minute

Recently, however, the tones of the election campaign were increasingly mixed in with the work of the government. If the Bundestag now goes into the summer break, the GroKo should finally have reached its expiry date. At the last minute, the last laws were brought in motion, such as the one called for by the Federal Constitutional Court to be sharpened Climate Protection Act. Even if this no longer changes the GroKo’s climate balance, which is pathetic from the point of view of environmental activists.

The Union and the SPD, on the other hand, take up the black and red flags that they have largely worked through the coalition agreement, and in the end there was even an agreement Supply Chain Act, which was hardly considered possible after years of constant strife.

But the list of failed projects is also considerable:

It was agreed that tenants and landlords would increase due to higher CO2 prices heating costs share. At the last moment the Union backed out.

Parts of the SPD, on the other hand, blocked what was deemed necessary for the security of German soldiers Armament of drones. After a long and extensive debate, the Social Democrats are calling for an even longer, more extensive debate.

The black and red government did not succeed either Children’s rights in the Basic Law to anchor. Or the scientifically no longer tenable Term “race” to be removed from the constitution. As well on Democracy Promotion Act or that Animal welfare label failed the GroKo.

Conclusion: The Groko-Zweckgemeinschaft has given the lie to all those who prophesied a premature divorce. She has achieved a lot more than you thought she could do. She didn’t manage everything. And for the SPD one thing remains: if you measure the success of the grand coalition by poll numbers, then the forced marriage was indeed crap for them.

You can see analyzes and interviews on this topic today from 1:45 p.m. to 5 p.m. on tagesschau24.